The Pomranka.Net

The boy scouts of Jackson Park School, held their annual chili cook off and I was there with my camera.  Mostly I was playing with the Pentax 16-50mm f/2.8 lens that I rented and wanted to see how it worked in the low light.  It did a good job, but trying to add a little fill light with just the camera’s built in flash caused a nasty round shadow at the bottom of the image.  Typical for a large lens with lens hood on.

Olivia’s brownie troop was there selling desserts that really hit the spot after trying to taste 20 different chili recipes.

I was then asked by Mr. Barnes to get some photos of the award winners.  He sure does appear to have fun being the emcee.

All the photos from the evening are available at jeffreyphoto.com in Events.

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It was a snow day for U. City schools, along with most of St. Louis, so we went sledding. Since I am loving my new Flip video camera, it came with us.

Unfortunately the bitter cold killed the battery in now time, but we did get some fun shots.

If there are problems with the embedded video, watch on YouTube.

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After baths, the girls will a little cold, so they snuggled on the chair under a couple blankets.  so cute, I could not resist getting the camera out.

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Yesterday Olivia made plans to go to the movie, just her and Jennifer. It was nothing Mia was interested in seeing, so it was decided Mia and I would stay home. Pretty typical move for our family, no problems. Well, no problems until Jen and O start to walk out the door. That is when Mia loses it.  The crying starts and nothing is getting her to calm down, nothing that is until I mention the magic place……FroYo.
Although it is only 23 degrees Fahrenheit, we trudge out into the cold and go get some frozen yogurt. After that, all was good with the world.

NOTE: This post is being composed and published on my BlackBerry by the Wordpress app. I am not sure of the reults and may have to make significant edits. But I want to compare this app to posting via my posterous.com account.

Update:  I skipped posting directly from my BlackBerry and sent up a draft to edit and I am glad I did, the image did not re-size and was at the bottom of the post.  So I fixed the image and moved it to the top.  So, I did not find an immediate answer to Posterous vs. BlackBerry Wordpress app.

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As is our tradition with most major holidays, we go over to Curt and Maryann’s for celebration and wonderful food.  With Curt being a rehabilitated chef, you can always count on having more food than you need and great friends.

I got a few more photos from the evening that I have uploaded to my flickr page in the Christmas 2009 set.

Of course we always stay too late whenever we visit Curt & Maryann, but with it being Christmas the girls were up and ready to go at 5:43am.  (I was so hoping to make it until 6.)

This year the girls went straight for their stockings and seemed pretty pleased, but the big fun came from the gifts under the tree.

This year I took a chance and gave Jennifer something she has said she wanted, but never asked for as a gift.  Although many of the women I worked with advised me against it, I got Jennifer a very fancy, stainless steel, long lasting, nose hair trimmer.

Naturally I dressed it up in a fancy jewelry box and gave it to her at the very end.  Only fitting for such an important gift.  But I think it was a good choice, because she did excuse herself to go try it right away.

The frenzy ended within an hour and about 15 minutes after saying it was the best Christmas ever, both girls amazed me by saying they were bored.  Bored at 7am on Christmas morning?!?!  I just don’t get it.

Fortunately, they realized that was just silly and they started playing with some of their new toys.

(Sorry for the poor quality of the camera phone, it was what I had.)

Not too much later, Jennifer’s parents arrived and round two of gift giving commenced.

Needless to say, our house was covered with gifts and wrapping paper.

After all the gifts we opened, Jen and I made a nice dinner (although 90 minutes later than we planned) and we enjoyed the day.

I have more photos from the day posted on my Flickr page under the Christmas 2009 set.  I did not get any amazing photos, but thanks to David Hobby (a.k.a. Strobist) I duplicated the lighting set up I had last year and was able to move all around the living room without worrying if the light would look good.

Now to dive into some of my gifts and see how I can make even better photos in 2010.

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